The Raffle Rulebook Nobody Reads Until the Council Writes

Every autumn, somewhere in Britain, a PTA treasurer has a small wobble. The raffle did well — £780 across a Friday night — and then someone says the word “licensing” and the celebratory squash goes flat.

The good news is that most school raffles are legal, simple and require no paperwork at all. The less good news is that the line between “no paperwork” and “you should have registered with the council in September” is thinner than most of us assume. It comes down almost entirely to when and how you sell the tickets.

What follows isn’t legal advice, and the Gambling Commission’s guidance plus your council’s licensing team are the final word. But it should keep you out of the weeds.

Start with the word “lottery”

Under the Gambling Act 2005, a lottery needs three things: a payment to enter, a prize, and an outcome decided by chance. Sell a £1 strip at the summer fair and you’ve met all three — whether you call it a raffle, a tombola, a draw or a “prize game”. The name on the banner changes nothing.

Remove one element and life gets easier. No payment, no lottery. A genuinely free prize draw — no ticket price, no “suggested donation”, no buying a strip in order to enter — sits outside lottery law altogether. That’s the logic behind every “no purchase necessary” line you’ve ever skimmed past.

Route one: tickets bought and drawn on the night

If tickets are sold at an event and drawn at that same event, you are usually running what’s called an incidental non-commercial lottery. No registration, no fee, no form.

The conditions are broadly:

• the draw is part of a wider event — a fair, disco, quiz night, sports day — rather than a standalone raffle
• tickets are sold at the event and drawn at the event, with nothing sold beforehand or afterwards
• proceeds go to your PTA’s purposes, never to anyone’s private gain
• no rollovers — no “didn’t win? your ticket goes into the Christmas draw”
• prize and running costs stay within the limits the Commission sets for incidental lotteries, which are modest and worth checking on gov.uk before you plan a headline prize

That last point catches out ambitious committees. If the top prize is bigger than those limits allow, you’ve outgrown the incidental route.

Route two: selling before the day

Selling in advance — in the playground over three weeks, to grandparents, to the staff room — turns your raffle into a small society lottery. That needs registering with your local authority before a single ticket goes out.

The shape of it, as things stand in 2026:

• register with the licensing team at the council where the PTA is based (a small fee, plus an annual renewal)
• total proceeds across all your lotteries must stay under £20,000 in a year — go over and you’re into Gambling Commission territory
• at least 20% of proceeds must go to your cause, which most PTAs clear comfortably
• tickets sell at one price to everyone, so no “five for a fiver” bundles
• no sales to under-16s
• a return goes to the council within three months of the draw, setting out proceeds, prizes and expenses

Registration sits in the society’s name, so make sure the name on the form matches the name on the bank account and the tickets. Otherwise you’ll be doing the whole thing twice.

The online trap

The compliance headache we hear about most in 2026 isn’t a dodgy tombola. It’s a Facebook post saying “Raffle tickets £2 a go, PayPal me, drawn Friday.”

Selling lottery tickets remotely — via a website, social media or a payment link — generally requires a Gambling Commission operating licence, which is not a piece of admin any PTA wants to take on. Keep paid ticket sales face to face, cash or card at the stall, and use your online channels to tell people where to buy rather than to sell.

What needs to appear on the ticket

The wording rules are fiddly. For a registered lottery, the essentials are roughly: the name of the society, the price, the date of the draw, and the promoter’s details — the promoter being the PTA. Posters and publicity should name the society and the draw date too, and say that the lottery is registered with the council.

Two habits worth adopting early:

1. Write “all profits” rather than “all proceeds” if you’re paying for any prizes.
2. Don’t call yourselves a registered charity if you aren’t one. “Supporting [School] PTA” is honest and does the job.

Five mistakes that turn a good night into a headache

Selling early. A ticket sold in the playground a fortnight beforehand has just pushed an incidental lottery into registration territory.

The rollover. Draw once, close it, write the winner’s name on the board. No second chances carried forward.

Under-16 sales. A ten-year-old collecting pound coins from grandparents on your behalf is still a sale to a child.

Nobody watching. Have two people oversee the draw, count the stubs and photograph the winning ticket next to the prize. It costs nothing and settles every argument afterwards.

Booze in a family hamper. A bottle is fine as a prize, but the winner must be over 18 and the hamper shouldn’t be aimed at children’s tickets.

The five-question check before anything is printed

Is this part of a wider event, or standalone? Are we selling in advance? If so, have we registered? Are we comfortably under the £20,000 annual ceiling? Who is witnessing the draw, and where are the stubs going?

If any answer is “not sure”, ring the council’s licensing team. In our experience they would far rather answer a question in September than process a complaint in December. Then keep the paperwork — tickets, returns, a note of the winners — for a couple of years.

A raffle raises real money for school with almost no overheads. A little care with the mechanics means the only thing anyone remembers is the queue at the stall.